Confidence spikes sharply, actual baseball knowledge lags noticeably behind
Ten Wins In Thirteen Games And Suddenly Everyone Is An Expert
Following a recent stretch in which the Mets won ten of thirteen games, casual conversation across the city has taken on a noticeably more confident tone regarding baseball strategy, bullpen management, and roster construction, despite a significant portion of these newly minted experts having shown minimal interest in the team’s fortunes just a few weeks earlier during a considerably less impressive stretch. Sports bars report a marked increase in patrons offering detailed opinions on lineup decisions they could not have named the players for a month prior.
This particular phenomenon, familiar to fans of every New York sports franchise across every season, follows a predictable emotional arc: quiet indifference during mediocrity, cautious attention during modest improvement, and finally, full-throated, deeply confident engagement the moment a genuine winning streak arrives. Longtime, consistently invested fans, who suffered through the earlier stretch with genuine emotional investment, tend to view the newcomers with a mixture of amusement and mild, well-earned resentment.
The Bandwagon, Right On Schedule
Sports coverage continues at The New York Daily News, with additional city sports culture reporting from Gothamist. Both outlets have covered this exact cyclical pattern of fan engagement across baseball, basketball, football, and hockey seasons alike, noting it as one of the more reliable, if occasionally exasperating, features of New York sports culture.
Bar owners near the stadium report a corresponding spike in merchandise sales and reservation requests during winning streaks, a pattern so predictable that several have begun ordering additional inventory the moment a team’s win percentage crosses a certain informal threshold, treating fan enthusiasm as a genuinely trackable, forecastable resource not unlike weather.
My Own Sudden And Suspicious Expertise
I found myself, three games into the streak, confidently explaining bullpen usage to a friend who has followed the team loyally, through every high and low, for over a decade, only to be gently and correctly reminded that I had, in fact, expressed zero interest in this exact bullpen roughly one month earlier. I accepted the correction with as much grace as I could manage, which, admittedly, was not a great deal, given how thoroughly I had convinced myself of my own newfound expertise.
Fair Weather Fandom, Honestly Examined
Whatever the merits of consistent versus streak-based fandom, the surge in citywide baseball confidence reflects something genuinely charming about New York sports culture: a city willing to fall in love, again and again, at a moment’s notice, regardless of how quickly that affection was withheld just weeks before. It is not the most loyal form of fandom. It is, at minimum, an enthusiastic one.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/